


I Wish I Had Known What We Would Grow Into

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Blarke [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, Mild Smut, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Octavia bringing home a new friend when shes 12 and Bell is 16 normally would have zero impact on his life. This friend though? This one is different, and now, 5 years later, he's starting to realise it.





	1. Chapter 1

Clarke came into Bellamy’s life in a whirlwind. He was 16, she was barely 12, and she was sitting on his couch one day when he got home from his after school tutoring session with middle schoolers. He waltzed into the living room, music loud in his headphones, and went to chuck his bag on the couch only to find a blonde head in the way. He caught the strap before it hit her in the back of the head, and grumbled something he thought was under his breath, but apparently was loud enough for her to hear. She turned her head, looking irritated, and he saw Octavia’s mouth move across the room, clearly scolding him. He yanked his headphones down around his neck. “What?” 

“Don’t be rude Bellamy! It’s not Clarke’s fault you didn’t see her.” She rolled her eyes at him, and continued flipping through the pages of her textbook. 

“I’m Clarke, by the way.” The blonde girl said, waving her hand absently over her head at him, never turning around. “I’m Octavia’s friend from English class.” The way she talked was like he should already know everything she was saying, not dismissive, but almost. He was too tired and irritated with the rest of his day to deal with this. 

“Cool. I’m going to my room.” He carried the bag by the long strap, hanging down by his ankles, dragging up the stairs, and by the time he came down for dinner, Octavia was done with her homework, and the blonde girl was gone, and that was that. That was Clarke, 12 years old, flippant, irritated, dismissive, and a little bit frustrating, and ever present from that day on.

Clarke was over at their house more often than she was at her own, he was pretty sure. Which was something he never really understood, because Clarke came from money, lots of money. Her mom was the head surgeon of Ark Hospital, and her father was the head of environmental protection for the state. They lived next door to the governor’s mansion, and were close with the Jaha’s, and he had seen her home and her neighbourhood. He never understood why she was always so eager to come over to their tiny little 2-bedroom house. Octavia only had her own room because he had spent his entire 14th year insulating and renovating the attic into a room he could live in, with the help of his best friend, because he was a teenage boy and needed to stop sleeping in the same room as his kid sister for his own sanity. Their house was little, full of clutter, something always needed to be fixed, and Clarke was still, for some reason, a permanent fixture in it from that afternoon on the couch. She would stumble downstairs almost every morning during the summer, and most weekend mornings during the school year, hair a fuzzy halo on her head, long pajamas dragging the floor, the dinosaur print on them always bringing a smile to his face. The first time he had seen them he had laughed and she had haughtily told him that “pajamas are gender neutral _Bellamy_ ” using his traditionally feminine name as cannon fodder for her own argument. He had smirked, and told her that it wasn’t the dinosaurs, but the fact that they were clearly about nine sizes too big for her. She had stuck her tongue out, and carried a glass of orange juice for Octavia and a glass of cranberry juice for herself back to Octavia’s room. Her eating habits also never ceased to fascinate him.

When Clarke was 13, almost 14, she fell off her bike trying to ride no hands, legs extended out to the side, down a steep hill. She claimed it was just because, but Octavia told him it was on a dare from a girl in their class that Clarke didn’t like, and she had done it mostly out of spite. Needless to say, he wasn’t shocked. Octavia had carried her inside, blood running down her shins, knees ripped to shreds and full of gravel, and her ankle swelling over the edge of her sneakers. She had tear tracks on her face, and she looked sad and scared, but had set her jaw in an attempt at defiance that he wasn’t going to try and argue with. Who was he to tell a teenage girl not to be brave.

He spent the next hour icing her ankle while he picked pieces of gravel out of her knees, rinsed them down, and spread Neosporin on the raw skin before wrapping a thick bandage around some cotton. She stopped sniffling about 20 minutes in, and was telling him how awesome it was (before she fell), and how he should have seen the look on Echo’s face when she took off. Her smugness was endearing, and he felt his heart swell for this young girl, who cared so much about Octavia, and who could somehow be flippant and irritated, smug and defiant, and also sweet, and also sad, and also kind. He hugged her for the first time that day, ruffling her hair, and he called her Princess when she complained that the fall had scuffed up her new sneakers. She had looked so offended at the nickname that he kept it up, and it slowly shifted from a way to annoy her to a term of endearment. Somehow Clarke had become part of his little family. 

Clarke brought a boy to the house one weekend, a warm, Saturday afternoon in May when all their friends were over in his backyard, and she was holding his hand on the grass. When she came inside for _two_ sodas, he smirked at her while grabbed the cans.

 “What?” she protested, her neck already red.

“Just didn’t realise the Princess had found her prince charming.” He tutted at her, sing-songy voice intact, and what he was sure was an amused glint in his eye.

 “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She continued to redden, up her jaw and over her cheeks. It was adorable.

 “Just make sure he’s nice to you, princess.” He smiled at her, ruffled her hair a little, and then left them to go finish his history essay, keeping a close eye out his window making sure no dirty boy hands roamed anywhere they shouldn’t on his sister or Clarke. General family had gone out the window, Clarke was special to him now. Clarke was the second younger sister he hadn’t known he had. He wasn’t sure how his sisters best friend had become a sister to him, but he guessed that’s what people mean when they tell you that friends are the family you choose. Octavia chose Clarke, and now she was family, whether anyone had expected it or not.

 Six months later, the day before Clarke’s 15th birthday, she came running into their house, crying, in desperate search for Octavia. She got flustered when she realised it was just him, home on the couch, and that Octavia was at field hockey practice.

 “Right,” She said, her voice laced with the mucus in her throat from crying, “I forgot about that. I was at school, too!” She was starting to shout, but almost just at herself. “I just had to get away from there, I just couldn’-” Her voice choked out over a sob and she looked like she might have trouble standing. He leapt to his feet and was across the room in minutes, coaxing her to a seat.

 “What’s the matter, Clarke?”

“It’s so stupid, I’m so stupid, I can’t believe I actually thought he wanted to be with ME.” Her voice was laced with bitterness now, and the anger in the back of his neck was rising in waves of lava, lapping at the base of his skull.

 “Whoa whoa whoa!” He could feel it in his whole body now, the possibility of her statements varying enormously but each one making him angrier than the last. “Just tell me what happened.”

 “Finn has a girlfriend.” She said it with such a sense of finality that he didn’t even need to ask any more questions. He could tell what she meant instantly. He led her to the couch, wrapped her favourite blanket around her arms, and put on Netflix on the most recent show Octavia had been watching. He brought her a cup of tea, and slid into the armchair across the room, reading a book and pretending that he wasn’t checking in on her every second to make sure she wasn’t crying. When Octavia came home, and she and Clarke went to her room, he stayed planted in the chair, but she caught his eye on the way into the hall, and he sent her a soft smile that she returned and he vowed if he ever saw Finn anywhere, he wasn’t responsible for what part of Finn’s face his fist made contact with.

 If Clarke looked gleeful coming home from school one day, and saw him icing his knuckles while he flipped through his history textbook for his community college course, well… He had nothing to say about that.

 After his first year at community college, he finally got enough saved to pay for a year at the local state school, and so, at 21, he moved out of his house, and into a dorm room on the campus and started his life. He was majoring in education, with a minor in history and mythology, living with his cool new roommate Nathan Miller, but he honestly was missing Octavia, and his mom, and probably Clarke, but he’d never tell her that. She knew she was family to him, and that he cared about her, but they still pretended like he was Octavia’s annoying older brother, and she was O’s bothersome best friend, and not like they were evolving into best friends on their own.

 Octavia dragged Clarke along to come visit him one weekend, showing up at his dorm with more bags than one weekend could ever truly require, and giddy smiles on their faces. He wrapped them both into a big hug, and stubbornly told them that they were in no way going to any parties. Octavia scoffed, and Clarke pulled a bottle of shitty vodka out of her bag, and he determined the battle lost. The two were 16, and he knew there was no point in fighting it. He brought them to a party with some of his close friends, a small party he had been promised, that turned into a rager the likes of which he hadn’t seen in a while, making him spend the evening chasing after the two girls, announcing their young age loudly to drunk college boys, and protectively standing over their shoulders the whole night while they danced, drunk and oblivious, and kicked college boys asses at beer pong. On the way home, Octavia was asleep sprawled across the entire back seat, and Clarke was in the front head lolling with the movements of the car as he drove them home. He was too busy focused on the road, and making sure he got them home safe, that he barely heard when she started talking.

 “I juss miss you Bell’meeee” her voice was low, slurred, and kind. She slung her head to the side, facing him, a loopy half smile dancing across her face. “I made O say she hadda drag me, BUT, I juss wanned to see you. You’re my best friend too, you know.”

 “I know I am Princess,” he laughed, turning to look at her at a red light, “You’re my best friend too.” His agreement seemed to ease her mind, and she was asleep the next time he looked over at her.

 If the next morning slipped her an extra pancake across the table when she wasn’t looking, because he knew she liked to have four but always got three because her mom told her four was too many, he’d never admit it was because she had finally admitted they were friends to his face. He’d also never admit that his best friend was his 16 year olds sister’s best friend too.

 Sometime in July, the sun hot in the sky, while he was home for the summer from school, when he was 22 and she was a few months from 18, she got in her first car accident. That in and of itself wasn’t so shocking. A little jarring, sure, to get a call from her telling him that she “was in a really super tiny small accident, Bell, it’s fine.” No, the jarring part came a few seconds later when she said, “I just need you to come pick me up is all, I can’t drive my car away, and the tow truck is gonna take it straight to the dealer.”

 “Of course, I’ll come get you Clarke, be there in a sec, drop me a pin.” He said, as he clamoured into his car. He got to the site of the accident, glass covering the street, seeing the side of her car crunched in on itself, a large truck angled strangely in the intersection, and Clarke, standing next to the police car, talking to an officer, with a white bandage standing out bright against her dark clothes. He was falling out of his car as quick as he could, stumbling over his own feet and racing towards her. He could feel his parental instincts kicking in, like it always did with Clarke and Octavia, but when he finally reached her he didn’t really know what to do with himself. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, rubbing down her arm, scanning over with eyes peeled for any mark he could find. Her face had a few scrapes, and she told him they had given her a couple of stiches where a glass shard had lodged in her arm, and her neck was a little stiff from the accident, but overall, she was fine.

 She got into his car after passing all the information off to the officer leaning her seat back to lie somewhat flat, and stretch her body a little. The drive was quiet, before he realised he didn’t know where they were going. He pulled over on the side of the road, but she stayed quiet. “Where am I taking you?”

 She pulled herself out of the fog she was existing in. “Hmmm?”

 “Where am I taking you? Home? School? Work?”

 “Oh… could you just take me to your place?”

 “Sure thing, Princess.” He decided not to ask the questions pressing against the back of his teeth, at least not yet, but it didn’t even matter. She knew what he was going to ask anyway.

 “My parents are getting a divorce, my mom cheated on him, with… with someone she works with.” Her voice was coming out like a robot, straight, emotionless, but he could hear it starting to crack and the walls to crumble a little. Any question of why she had called him over her parents was dissolving, but he still wondered why she hadn’t called Octavia. He pushed the question aside as she kept talking. “My dad told me, I was just driving… I think I had a red, I’m not even sure, I was just… trying to get my mind off things, I don’t know. The truck hit me, thankfully in the passenger side I guess.” She was rambling now, stuttering over words, terrified and clearly distraught. It was amazing how rapidly her composure had evaporated. He took her face into his hands, turning her, getting her to focus.

 “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” She shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes.

 “I just don’t wanna go home. I have a change of clothes in my bag, I just needed to get away from my house. From my mom. Dad moved out, and I just…” She trailed off at the end, and he wiped her cheeks with his thumbs, brushing away her tears, nodding at her. He turned the car around, and drove them home. She only had one change of clothes, but she stayed with Octavia and him for almost a week, borrowing O’s clothes and using his body wash in the shower (“Octavia’s smells like cupcakes, Bellamy. I am not a fairy princess, I don’t intend to smell like dessert.” She had said, so stubbornly, when he commented on the fact that his was starting to dwindle. There was a fresh bottle of it on the edge of the tub the next morning.). He didn’t ask about her parents again, and she didn’t volunteer it, but every night he’d come into the living room long after she and O had gone to bed to find her up, watching sad movies on Netflix, and would pop them popcorn and sit next to her, and if he laced their fingers together while she cried at something other than her own sadness, it was because maybe she needed it, whatever it was. She never pulled away and he never stopped offering.

 He wasn’t sure when he and Clarke became closer than she and Octavia, but by the time he realised it, the chance to rectify it had long since passed. They would bail on nights out with other friends when they could find time to spend together, her senior year of high school taking up more of her time than she had expected and his distance making it hard to find time with each other, so they made time. The first-time Octavia had noticed, her rage had been a force of nature, but after a few weeks, she had sort of come to terms with it. Clarke had been strangely silent, but he heard her through O’s door reassuring her that no matter who her “best friend” was, she would always be her sister, chosen, bigger than blood. He never brought it up, because that wasn’t who they were, and she never did either, but the next time he had a free afternoon and she left a girl’s night with O and Raven at his first offer to come spend the afternoon at his apartment, he couldn’t help the warm feeling he felt in his chest. He also wasn’t sure when his relationship with her started to shift, he really thinks it just started to creep up on him. At first it was just nice, to have another sister in his life, and then it was nice to have another friend, and then she was his best friend, and now she’s the most important person in his life, save Octavia, and then it was… something else.

 Her high school graduation came and went, and he hugged her a little tighter than he meant too in front of her family, but no one even seemed to notice except Octavia, who gave him a wary look over Clarke’s shoulder. They spent every possible minute together through the summer, the three of them spending weekends at Clarke’s beach house whenever he could get off work, Clarke’s blonde hair taking up residence on their couch the days when she couldn’t, and he thinks his heart had never been so full. But then the summer came to a close, cool evenings taking the place of hazy hot days, and Clarke has packed all her bags, and she was going to school over 2 hours away. Which, in theory isn’t actually that far, but they’d never been more than thirty minutes apart for any substantial length of time in almost 7 years, and he was having a hard time with it. They both teared up a little when she hugged him goodbye outside his house, stopping in on her way out of town, and then she was gone, and the distance made his heart ache. He told himself it was because she was his best friend, which was partially true.

 He got a text from her on a Thursday afternoon in October.

  **Princess:**

**Hey Bell**

Me:

                                              Hey, Princess, what’s up?

**Princess:**

**Just wondering if you were busy this**

**weekend, or if you wanted to come**

**visit me?**

Me:

                                              Definitely not busy, what’s the

                                              occasion? 

**Princess:**

**Nothing special, just missed you is**

**all :), realised you hadn’t seen my**

**dorm yet, or met my roommate!**

Me:

                                               Well, since you’ve only been in school for like, 15 minutes…

                                               Me:

                                               I was gonna plan a visit eventually, you know

                                               Me:

                                               I missed you too Princess, I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon 

**Princess:**

**Jeez, gotta pull a mans teeth just to**

**get him out of his apartment to see**

**his best friend for a weekend**

**Princess:**

**See you tomorrow, Bell**

He tried to ignore the way his heart pounded in his chest the whole drive.

He stepped out of the car outside her dorm, breathing in the crisp fall air, the sun setting behind her building. She wasn’t outside yet, she had told him to text her when he pulled up, so he had a chance to catch his breath, which had been coming in short bursts since he was about 10 minutes away. He didn’t know what was happening to him. This was Clarke, his best friend, he’d known her since she was 12 years old. She was his person. And the idea of seeing her was making his breathing unsteady, his heart race, and his fingers shake a little. They talked every day, texting constantly, phone calls at least once a week, skype calls occasionally, sitting in silence on their computers together, doing homework, reading, being together as best they could with the distance. So this feeling, it wasn’t concern about whether or not there relationship had changed. 

                                               Me:

                                               What’s a guy gotta do to see his best friend around here? 

She didn’t answer, but a few moments later she came barrelling through the front door of her building, sprinting full speed towards him, flinging herself into his arms hard enough to push him into his car. He wrapped his arms around her, one around her waist, the other snaking up her back to cup the back of her head, threading his fingers into her blonde waves, and held her close. He spun her around, her bright laughter ringing out around him. He set her down, hauling his bag up over his shoulder, and let her lead him inside. They made casual small talk, he asked about her classes, she asked about his, even though they both already knew. There was strange tension, between them, around them, like they were worried things were going to be different but didn’t know how to make sure they weren’t. He stepped into her room, and the tension grew just a little, but then he was throwing his bag on her bed, and she was complaining about a dirty bag on her clean sheets, and he was bickering back that he had thrown it on her “ _BLANKET_ , Clarke”, and suddenly the thickness in the air between them disappeared, and they were laughing and arguing, back to their old selves in an instant. 

She told him about a party with some of her friends that she wanted to him to meet, and so he fished around in his bag, found the button down navy shirt he had packed, and cracked a book while she got dressed. Jeans, a little crop top that made him divert his eyes quickly from her frame, heavy heeled boots that gave her a couple inches (“Still shorter than me, Clarke”, to which she scoffed), and they climbed into a cab, heading to the house some random college kid owned, and he smiled softly out the window while she rambled on and on about this friend and that. It was hard to keep track, but listening to her voice was calming. 

The party was raging, in full swing at only 11pm, and she laced their fingers together to pull him through the crowd towards the kitchen, kissing cheeks and brushing shoulders as they weaved through the house, him just happy as ever to follow. Once they were in the kitchen they were handed shots by someone named Harper, a friend of Clarke’s from her chem class, and they downed them, one, two, three, four, and the music was swelling and Clarke was leaving his side to dance with a friend, leaving him with a beer in his hand leaning against the kitchen counter, watching her through the cut out in the kitchen wall that opened into the living room. Her blonde hair swirled around her in the dim lighting, and he realised that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his whole life, and it made him physically stagger. It was the first time he had really let himself think it, because up until that point she was always too young, or his sisters friend, or some excuse piling on top of all the others, but now she was 20, almost 21, and she was HIS best friend now, not Octavia’s and all the other reasons he had spent the last year or so beating into his brain were nowhere to be found. Instead, all he could think about was Clarke, and how nice her hair smelled when they would hug, and how easy everything was with her, and how much he wanted to spend every waking moment with her, all the time.

He was much too drunk for this.

The party dragged on, and he stopped drinking, and Clarke kept going, and she was introducing him to every single person she saw that she might maybe know as her “ _best friend in the whole wide universe, Bellamy_ ”, and hanging off him, and holding his hand and then the night was over and they were in the back of a cab again, making their way back to her dorm. 

“You wanna know a secret, Princess” He said, quietly to her as they rode. 

“Of COURSE!” She had her eyes closed, her words not slurred by coming out a little jumbled, and he knew she wouldn’t remember a word of anything they said the next day. Which was perfect, because this was the only time he’d be brave enough to say it, for now. 

“You’re my favourite person in the whole world,” He started.  
“I thought you said this was a secret, Bell” 

“Well, if you’d let me finish!” 

“Oh. Right, sorry.” She was giggling now, eyes still closed, her hand hanging out the window as the breeze from the car blew her hair everywhere. 

“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted,” she stuck her tongue out at him, “You’re my favourite person in the whole world, and I think I might be falling in love with you, Princess.” 

She turned to the side, making her whole body face him. She was smiling now, big and giddy. “Oh, good!” She laughed out, clapping her hands together. “I was wondering when you we- OH TAXI DRIVER MAN! Can we stop and get fries?? Please, oh Bellamy please get him to go through a drive through! I love French fries, they’re so salty!” and whatever she was going to tell him was lost in the drunken mind of his best friend. Probably better that way. They did indeed get fries, which she inhaled, and when he went to lay out his blanket on her floor she demanded he sleep in her bed with her, because he was her “best friend, Bell, come on!”, so he curled up in her bed with her, too small really for even just him and way too small for them together, but she wrapped her arms around his waist and curled into his back, and he could hear her softly snoring before he knew what was happening, and he thought maybe this was what happiness and love really felt like.

She didn’t remember a word of it in the morning, and he slid an extra pancake onto her plate in the dining hall, and she smiled up at him, syrup at the corner of her mouth.

He went home that night, after they spent the day lounging on her tiny dorm bed watching reruns of One Tree Hill, tossing popcorn back and forth until so much of it was stuck in her hair that she doubled over in laughter. When they got to his car at about 6, they hugged for longer than he probably should let them, since his heart wants to leap out of his chest the whole time, and then he's gone. 

He was in so deep. Too deep. He had no idea what to do.


	2. meaningful conversations over chicken tacos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy comes home for the summer, and he and Clarke have an accidental conversation that leads to something more. It feels like happily ever after, but is it ever really that easy?
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry for the late addition, my exams took over my life!! I have the plan for the next one, which will be the end! Hope you like it! - B

Every time Clarke called him after his weekend at her place, he could feel his heart skip a beat in his chest, and he didn't really know how to feel about that, as a situation. It was a good feeling, and it clarified a lot of things about the way his brain felt when he talked to her, or the way his palms would sweat when he would see her, but somehow also stressful. She didn't remember the conversation in the back of the taxi, which was probably for the better. 

When they finally make it back home for the summer, her for the whole summer, him for just a couple weeks to see his sister and help his mom, it feels... different. He doesn't see her right away, because his mom has been working 3 jobs to keep their house and save for Octavia to go to school, and the house was a wreck. He'd been deep into de cluttering and cleaning for three full days before he even thinks to call her, and another two before he accidentally blows her off because he finds water damage in the drywall of the kitchen and gets too caught up with busting the entire wall down to even realise that its past 4pm and he missed lunch. In fact, he was so involved in his demolition project, music blaring from his speakers, that he didn't even hear her come in, meaning he jumped a mile out of his skin and almost threw his hammer at her when she switched off said music. She laughed while he caught his breath, a bright sound that caused his heart to stammer in his chest again. She pulled him into a hug, before unsticking her hands from his back and grimacing. 

"when was the last time you showered, exactly? you're sticky with sweat and you smell like a boys locker room." 

"So nice to me as always," he laughed, rubbing his sweaty arms across her face, causing her to squeal and jump away. "What time is it?" 

"It's almost 430... you're about 5 hours late for our lunch." It was a slightly accusatory tone, but her eyes betrayed her. 

"Sorry, i got caught up with this wall. You know how it gets here when I'm gone for too long. Mom never has time to take care of anything big like this, so it gets away from her. I wasn't even paying attention to the clock." He never really has to explain himself to her, but he does it anyway. She always indulges him. 

"well, it looks like you could probably still eat, so go shower, and we can go out." It wasn't a question, and he wouldn't have been able to argue with her even if he had wanted too. He pulled his tank top off from the back of his head, towards his bathroom. He turned quick to grab his phone off the counter, and the sight of her turning away quick, a pink flush rising against her neck made his chest puff just a little, and if he felt a little smug through his shower, he was only human. 

Dinner turned into ordering take out from a local taco place when he got out of the shower and they couldn't agree on where to go or what to do, until it was later than they thought and he was still in sweats and no shirt, and his wall still had a hole that he could walk through, and his shoulders and arms were hurting, so she called in the biggest order of tacos he'd ever heard, with chips and salsa and guac and queso dip, and helped him sweep up the drywall on the floor while they waited. She told him about her summer job working in her moms office, filing papers and scanning documents ("its the most boring job in the entire world, Bell. Im not sure how my brain hasn't fallen out of my head its so dull."), and asked about school and his job at the library. Small talk was never their strong suit though, and soon they fell into an intense debate on the importance of libraries v. art museums, and which was more necessary, though he was pretty sure they had somehow switched sides at some point and neither of them realised until it was too late to back down, so they kept it up. Bellamy had just gone into a rant about how access to books fosters interest in art, so libraries are definitely more important that art museums, while she was arguing that art museums give access to visual history that spark an interest in books, when the bell rang, shocking them both out of their discussion. She dipped to get the door, and he took a second to evaluate the moment. They had been sitting face to face on his counter, a cup of coffee in hand, on leg dangling off the side, knees touching. He was leaned back against his fridge, and she was leaning forward, hunched over her other knee that was propped up with her arm resting on top of it, and they were arguing and laughing and her foot kept brushing his ankle when she'd swing her leg but she kept doing it. It was moments like this that made him realise just how much he loved her. 

She reentered the room with two full bags of food, one starting to split at the seams, and plopped herself down right on his kitchen floor. She pulled out large hand towels from his drawer and spread them on the ground, and unpacked the food right there. 

"A picnic!" She declared, when he huffed out a laugh, settling down across from her on the floor and helped her pull the last bits from the bags, settling in. 

She started eating, and his whole world had a rosy glow around it, a soft pink light just seemed to come in from all the corners of his vision. He loved the way she would scrunch her nose while she picked the onions off her food, or how she'd move around the guac until she got a bit without jalapeños on it, and how she had to tie her hair up about 3 tacos in because she had almost gotten it in the salsa leaning across the floor to grab a napkin. Watching her was mesmerising, which is probably why he was speaking before he even realised what he was saying. 

"I am so in love with you." He said, soft but firm, before he could catch himself. He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut and wishing his hands weren't covered in food so he could cover his face. Fuck. 

The room was silent for a lot longer than he really wanted, although he didn't really know what was doing to happen now so he wasn't sure why he was suddenly disappointed. Silence was objectively better than laughter, right? He kept his eyes closed as long as he felt like he could, before cracking one eye open to look at her. To his surprise, she wasn't staring at him, with her mouth open, or gone (another option that played around his brain for a brief minute). No, instead, in the most Clarke way he could imagine, she was just eating her tacos. In that moment specifically, she was looking right at him, while squeezing a lime over the next taco in her pile, with a dreamy look in her eyes and a smirk playing across her mouth. 

"Are you just going to sit there with your eyes closed or are we going to talk about this?" She was so casual, picking an onion out and tossing it on the napkin next to her. He was so casual, while he choked on his own spit. 

Coughing for a second, he opened his eyes fully and tried to right himself. "you ... wh... you want to talk ab... about this?" Somehow situations like this always caused him to descend into blubbering nonsense instead of actual sentences. 

"Well.. you said you loved me. I figured we might wanna at least get around to that." Now was when he started to notice, that she was "casually" eating but her hands were shaking just a little, and her shoulders were kind of tense and raised up near her ears, and there were nerves radiating off of her. That classic Clarke Griffin Facade was present, and he shouldn't have been surprised, but he was, because nerves meant something... else. He let her keep it up. 

"Well... i didn't really mean...," her shoulders rose a half inch higher, "to say it. I didn't mean to say it. I mean it, but... I was just.. I dont know.... What do you want to talk about?" He let himself trail off, and silence fell over them again. 

"I mean... What do you want me to want to say?" She should have been teasing, but he knew she wasn't. He knew she really wanted him to take the lead, because she was never good with feelings, with conversations about feelings, and so she needed him to push them forward. 

The only problem was that he didn't really know. He hadn't planned this, he hadn't intended this, and so he just sort of shrugged, and made a questioning grunt, and looked back at his hands, only to hear her say "for fucks sake" under her breath, and start setting her lunch down, wiping her hands and getting up and heading to the bathroom. Not exactly what he expected. He sat firm, staring at the hole in his wall, a chip still in the salsa he was holding, when she came back taking the salsa from his hand, pushing him back away from the food with her full strength, until he was resting against the counter, and settling into his lap. 

His hands found her waist, warm through her tshirt, while hers found his face, lacing back into the hairs at the base of his skull. He was sort of frozen, while she sat for just a second, peering into his eyes. 

"Could you say it again?" She whispered, and he could smell peppermint on her breath, which he registered in the back of his mind as a very good sign, but he was too close to her mouth and his hands were still feeling the warmth from her body, and he couldn't really register anything at all beyond a background thought. It took him a bit to even register what she was asking, which is probably what made her giggle slightly and rub her fingers against his scalp, which was not helpful. 

"Sa- you want me to say it again?" He barely spoke, and he could smell the tacos on his breath, something he usually wouldn't be aware of. She nodded, just slightly, a smile easy on her face. "I am so in love with you." He whispered, letting his voice rasp just a little in his throat, watching her pupils grow just a little while he spoke, and even more when he ran his hands up her sides and around her back, finding the grooves of her spine with his fingers. She parted her lips just a little, and took a deep breath, and spoke. 

"I had this... faint memory, i thought it was a dream, of you telling me you loved me last year. In the back of a cab or something when you visited me in school. I remembered being really drunk, and wanting fries, and in the back of my mind somewhere i thin i heard you tell me that you loved me... or something like that, and it was the best dream i'd ever had. I never brought it up, because it was a dream, but it was a nice dream, and ever since then I've just kind of... considered it, kept thinking about it, and it sort of stuck with me. It planted a sort of seed, i guess, in my mind, and anytime we talked it was there." She was rambling, but she was so cute and she was saying things that made his hands shake just a little, so he let her keep going. "Always in the back of my mind, and it had the strangest impact on my head. I just kept wondering... I don't know" All he could do now is smile at her, big and cheesy. 

"Is this story going somewhere, or are you just telling me about how you've been thinking about me maybe loving you?" He teased, but kept his voice raspy and low, just to her, even though she was the only one in the room, and her eyes were all pupils now, dark and wide, and her pulse was racing under his fingers. She tugged gently on his hair in protest. 

"I love you too" she whispered, soft and slow, and he kissed her, finally, because he couldn't bear to wait any longer, and she was immediately responsive above him, all soft lips that definitely tasted like peppermint, giving him a second of pause.

"did you.. brush your teeth?" he pulled back, and traced down her jaw and laughed against her neck.

"well... i didn't want the first you kissed me... for me to taste like chicken tacos? Obviously you didn't have the same concern." She was breathy and he was wrecked by it, and he laughed, a fully belly laugh that shook them both. 

"Well i'm sorry that i didn't see this coming." He mouthed into her shoulder, tugging her t-shirt gently down to expose more skin, and suddenly they were lost. Hands and lips and teeth found skin and slowly they were equal levels of undressed, down to just panties and underwear, when his leg slung out as they tried to get horizontal and he kicked over a cup of salsa. Giggling ensued, and they untangled, picking up their picnic and putting it away, kissing and finding skin with fingertips as they moved around each other in the kitchen, and then they were on each other again, hands on skin as they seemed to chase each other into his room, finding door frames and couches and cabinet corners with their hips and knees and shoulders until they were tumbling onto his bed together. 

His lips found every nook curve of her body, the insides of her thighs and the swells of her breasts, trying to find every spot on her body that made her sigh or make soft mewling sounds against his skin. He traced her body with his mouth, down to her warm centre, tasting her and feeling her thighs squeeze around his head until she couldn't take another second and was yanking him up to kiss him, wet and dirty, lining him up with her hand and pressing into the backs of his thighs with her heels, pressing up as he sank into her. they couldn't get the angle quite right, and she was panting and he was frustrated, until he stood up and lifted her onto his dresser and pushed into her while she sat until she was breathing heavy and beginning him not to move, not even an inch, and she was biting into his thumb as he held the side of her face, and she was warm and soft around him and they were coming apart. 

They woke up curled together in his bed, a white sheet tangling them together, the sun just coming up, shining bright beams into his room and across their backs. They drank coffee in nothing but their blankets, picking at bagels with cream cheese and jelly, laughing and kissing and being in love. She went home, hours later, all rosey cheeked and wearing yesterdays clothes, promising to call that night, to make plans, so when she called only 2 hours later, he was a little confused, and then his whole world stopped on a dime. 

"My father died Bell." And all he heard were her sobs. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out with me on


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